In my view, Visual Studio Code doesn't share much with the standard Visual Studio software, except for the name.

This isn't a bad thing, per se. But don't expect all the features you're used to in Visual Studio.

Getting started is super easy. Open up a command lind, and type:

choco install visualstudiocode

Then navigate to some source code folder (still in command line) and type:

code .

(You may have to restart your command line environment, since chocolatey updates the path environment variable)

I used this on a PHP project. When I opened a php file, Visual Studio Code recognized it a such, and complained that it couldn't find the php executable.

If you are also using PHP, you'll need to go to File->Preferences->Workspace Settings. This will open up a JSON file that you can make changes to. It will probably be just an empty JSON object to start with.

You then have two options:

Add "php.validate.enable": false

Add "php.validate.executablePath": "path\to\php.exe"

I opted for #1, since I was just doing some quick hacking on a really simple PHP project.

Easy, peasy. Visual Studio Code doesn't take up much hard drive space; it's quick to install and use. So give it a try today.